Poll When Did the Symptoms of PTSD First Appear, After the Initial Traumatic Event?

[monkee]

I know that I had symptoms very soon after my father passed away when I was 13. Specifically I stopped feeling and became dissociative almost from the start. I also suppressed thoughts about the event and about my father, in other words I was avoidant in thinking about the trauma from the very beginning.

 

[lrs]

I wish I could answer this question, but I don't really know.

 

[moog]

After many years in the military, the initial trauma happened early on in my career and there has been multiple other trauma's over the years. But since a short tour in Afghanistan and the loss of many friends in the last couple years the symptoms really started to appear.

 

[Deleted member 1606]

Needs Another Choice

One more choice, please. I don't remember ever being normal. Symptoms and abuse are there in my earliest memories.

 

[dust]

My first conscious memory of PTSD symptoms was at the age of 13. I don't really remember much else.

 

[TLight]

I've always felt like an animal trapped and about to be eaten. Ever since I can remember........Unfortunately, I have no frame of reference for what 'normal' is like.

 

[Ravenn]

I can't remember when the symptoms first started, but then again I can't really remember when the trauma began - only that it lasted from the time I was about 9 until I was an adult and left home. I have had symptoms as long as I can remember, but only just learned (at 34) that the anxiety and depression that I have had as long as I can remember were part of the PTSD.

 

[Lisa]

For the first and also my father... I can't remember exactly when. I answered 12 months or more in relation to the second sexual abuse. Though the nightmares were around long before. It's hard to answer, I have multiple trauma. The flashbacks of it were about a year after it ended though.

 

[NarcSis]

I consider my work incident my 'first initial trauma' because I have experienced many traumatic events with no lingering symptoms or disturbances in my day to day life. My attempt to resuscitate my mother at her death caused some disturbance over a period of a year, but I did function through it.
My symptoms began almost immediately, within the hour of this last incident, one can call it acute stress but it felt 'stronger' than normal. By the third day with the adrenalin, shaking, anxiety and insomnia not yet beginning to fade, I just knew something had gone wrong with how this memory was processed, it was not following the 'usual' pattern.

 

[a3a2]

I seem to have had symptoms for as long as I can remember. I know I was watching abuse long before the age of four, because that is when my brother ran away from home. As children, my siblings and I would repeatedly play a game I call escape. In the game, someone mean had beaten us, and we were escaping.

I really "melted down" about two years ago. I then started therapy and the symptoms have drastically improved since then.

 

[sidekick]

I can't answer this poll. I have tried a few different times and each time I just stare at it and am unable to choose just one trauma I went through to answer this question. My earliest memory is from 5 and I am beginning to think through flashbacks/memories that trauma happened years earlier. I have no idea when PTSD started. When looking back, I have just always have some symtoms or another, from toddler onward.

 

[Jestadud]

The symptons of ptsd were instantaneous with the incident that caused me to go full blown ptsd.
Although I didn't understand what was happening until I was diagnosed 9 to 12 months later.
I voted for the shortest time shown which is 1 to 3 months.